


let’s dance, my love (dancing at the sea)

by tangerinick



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Acxa (POV), Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, For Seaborne, Galra Generals, Gen, a Voltron Merzine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 21:46:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18455234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tangerinick/pseuds/tangerinick
Summary: If the land people had been horror stories, Acxa’s childhood memory spins the first time she crests through the broken, brilliant surface into a fairytale. It’s the gasp of too much air, the rattle in her gills, the sharp tang of—of a sense she didn’t know she had, the vivid taste of salt on her tongue. The flash of an even blue wall up above, unblemished by any scratches of other colors, so solid that Acxa reaches out for it through the hacking cough wrecking her lungs, before her mama drags her back into the water.





	let’s dance, my love (dancing at the sea)

**Author's Note:**

> For [Seaborne, a Voltron merzine!](https://voltronmerzine.tumblr.com)
> 
> You can check out the amazing accompanying art by [@tane-p](http://tane-p.tumblr.com) [here!](http://tane-p.tumblr.com/post/184015005888/my-second-piece-for-the-voltronmerzine-based-on)

Acxa’s but a fry when she first travels to the surface.

Her mama’s worry-lines are deep as she hesitantly drags Acxa back from rushing up like a bouncing bubble; she keeps her tightly tucked under one arm as they ascend slowly. Acxa has difficulty flexing her tail this close together, but she tries valiantly to wriggle free. 

“Stay close,” her mother says, tugging her back down. “I don’t want the land people taking you.”

“The land people?” Acxa asks, wide-eyed. Until that age, the land people were nothing but a frightening myth, scary stories told around the soft glow of the cave crystals by her other mom; Mama, with pursed lips, had given her a scolding for putting their daughter through that. “They really exist?”

“They do,  _ chéri _ ,” her mama says.

Acxa frowns, confused. “But don’t they live on the land?”

“Sometimes the land people travel, just like us. And they go over the surface in big, floating boxes. That’s the shadows you feel moving sometimes on the surface. It’s the land people passing through.”

“That— _ that’s _ —really?” Acxa gapes. She thought they were silent whales, whales without a song. It’s a revelation, to her young mind, that she’s sensed land people before. That the mythical monsters, with their tails like arms, their fins like fingers, and their dulled eyes like blunt stones—monsters that fascinate her so endlessly—are real. 

“You’re old enough to learn about the surface now. Maybe that’ll finally put that mind of yours to rest.” Her mother’s voice is tight, and Acxa can sense the underlying fear. She knows what her questions do, how it makes the other children sigh in exasperation. But mom always answers them, without hesitation. It’s Mama that makes it difficult to learn things, especially about the surface. Young as she is, Acxa already knows one thing—her mama fears the glittering mirror far above their heads. 

Later, Acxa recognizes the trip for what it was: her mama’s attempt at dissuading her from reaching the surface, hoping that answers would finally end her dangerous fascination.

It does the opposite. 

If the land people had been horror stories, Acxa’s childhood memory spins the first time she crests through the broken, brilliant surface into a fairytale. It’s the gasp of too much air, the rattle in her gills, the sharp tang of—of a sense she didn’t know she had, the vivid taste of salt on her tongue. The flash of an even blue wall up above, unblemished by any scratches of other colors, so solid that Acxa reaches out for it through the hacking cough wrecking her lungs, before her mama drags her back into the water. 

“ _ Acxa _ ,” she scolds. “Not too fast.”

Acxa doesn’t listen, can’t listen, dizzy with surprise. “What was that?”

“The sky,” her mama says, as if it pains her.

“Can I touch it?” Acxa wonders, because she’s caught a glimpse of a new dimension, an unimaginable direction going  _ up _ , up to where the glinting, solid surface had been.  

“If you fly high enough.” Her mama shakes her head. The worry-lines are back. 

 

Acxa never quite stops believing her mother’s words, never quite stops believing there’s something up there, above the surface. Throughout the years, as her scales develop into an opaline purple hue and start to catch the sun’s rays slicing through the surface—the sun, a glowing ball of fire in the widespread sky, too bright to look at—and as her fins elongate, she yearns. When she rises out of the water for a glimpse of the upper world, arms reaching, her tail feels like an anchor, dragging her back down to the depths. 

Acxa grows old enough to migrate, leaving the sing-song of her mom’s voice and the shadow of her mama’s worry, the crystal caves and the acid-green, rippling seaweed, and follows the heated ocean currents. The coast is where it brings her, near shallower water and a crowded settlement filled with the hubbub of a rainbow of frequencies and surfacescrapers. 

What had been an interest with the deep sky and the infinite expanse of water, as far as her eyes can reach, becomes a short-lived fascination with life above the surface. Life that now seems so much closer, with the sheer cliffs arching into the sky like hands, the grinding waves smashing into the fallen rock, a twist of chaotic water and seafoam. 

Acxa is eighty-four seasons old when she first senses the telltale thrash of the land people, kicking limbs and distressed, jerky movements. As she stares from afar, eyes barely above the surface like the crabs that infest her garden, they tumble off the rocky cliffs like pebbles. Some hurtle down like baby squids, some fly with great, extravagant leaps like birds, letting out loud caws of joyous laughter. Her heart soars with them, for just a moment, hearing their distant cries and feeling—more than seeing—the crash of their clumsy bodies connecting with the water. 

The land people were never meant for the water, just like she was never meant for the land. But they can still fly, suspended in the air; Acxa can’t do that, not with delicate fins that would tear like seaweed-paper at the slightest scrape of the cutting rock or a lumpy tail that’s as useless as a seagull is underwater. 

And that’s just the way it is, for Acxa. Life above the surface is impossible, as untouchable as the high-rising sky. She’ll never be able to fly, not even momentarily like the land people. Some part of her will always be dragging her back into the water, down under the surface and binding her tight, away from the lightness of the salt air, the kind ocean breeze, like her mama with too much fear. There’s no fighting what she is. 

It becomes a prideful consolation prize to Acxa, believing that if she can’t go above the surface, no one else can. 

 

The thing is, with consolations prizes there’s always a winner. A whale of a winner. 

Zethrid’s quite like nothing Acxa’s ever seen before, or at least not fully. She’s seen all sorts of whales, slow-moving with their peaceful eyes, drifting to the slow rhythm of the waves. Their singing was the lullaby that sang her to sleep as a fry, songs echoing hauntingly through the waters, their pectoral fins a quick playground when a pod came through their area. But Zethrid, with her sharp teeth and powerful body, tail rippling with power, is not like those whales. Her boisterous grin and tendency for violence speaks for itself.

Acxa has heard the name for merpeople like Zethrid before, rogue mixes with other ocean species. An orca, a  _ killer _ whale, vicious, deadly. Not to be trusted, her mama used to say—then again, her mama didn’t trust very much anyway. 

Acxa’s determined to hate Zethrid, the way she carelessly pokes and prods at Acxa’s soft spots like a jellyfish, unintentionally landing stinging blows with brutally honest remarks. Acxa’s determined to hate her even more when Zethrid—attached to her side like a barnacle she can’t pry off—follows her during a ritual trip to the surface. Zethrid’s just as stupidly unafraid of it as she is. 

“Look at this,” Zethrid says, teeth glinting like seashells in the fractured rays of the sun, and she’s off, ducking beneath the surface. Acxa inhales a rattling breath and watches her shadow fade back into the depth of the ocean, melding into the dark blue beneath them. 

The air is cool over Acxa’s first eyelid, and she waits patiently. In the distance, the screech of the seagulls is barely audible as the soft lap of water against her skin—

There’s an explosion of noise, the water collapsing upon itself in a cascade of waves. Seafoam flies like bullets. Zethrid’s arched body hangs, for a moment, suspended. Her tail glistens like the crystals, torso illuminated with shining water. There is nothing around her, under her, nothing but blue. A perfect curve, weightless. It lasts for only a second, but Zethrid flies with strength far above the surface. A crescent moon backlit by the brilliant sky.

Time resumes its course, and the resounding clap of Zethrid hitting the water is like an earthquake, shaking Acxa to her bones with the force of the impact. She quickly ducks under the huge waves coming her way.

It’s not flying like the land people do, but it’s close enough for bile to rise in Acxa’s throat when the strong flex of her tail won’t lift her up in the air any further than the waist, like the hold of a weak-armed lover. 

 

Sometimes it feels like the surface mocks her for her incompetence, because every friend—Zethrid becomes a friend and so do Ezor and Narti, whether Acxa wants it or not—seems to have everything she wants.  The surface is an obsessive relationship, and Acxa is so incredibly jealous of what she can’t have. Consolation prizes are bearable when another steps up to receive the same, and that’s why at first Acxa considers herself and Ezor two runner-ups for a prize they failed to win.

When Acxa first sees Ezor fly, it’s amidst the confusion of a surface storm, thunderclaps like avalanches in the trenches of the ocean, sheets of rain falling like sharpened glass, waves with a pull so strong they could collapse caves in their motion. The ocean is waging a war with itself; deep down below, in the city Acxa frequents, a stifling silence arises in the spaces left by the distant thunder of the surface. 

Acxa lets herself be carried over a wave the size of a surfacescraper and feels her stomach fall like a heavy stone, dragged down by her tail. She loves every moment of it, even though the rain stings her eyes and the sharp wind tears at her skin like dragging nails, because the surface is  _ furious _ , furious with violent anger Acxa would consider an impossibility. 

Ezor is a flash of lightning, really, a spark of pink set against the raging waves, flying out of sight in a second. Acxa thinks she’s dreamed it, but lightning strikes often during a storm, and she’s back.

It’s not a bird. It’s not a fish. It’s something Acxa always wanted to be, a shimmering tail like hers but short, stunted as some would say with a critical eye, and it doesn’t weigh her down. Her wings, tough film stretch like a membrane between her arms, out and curved like the migratory birds that fly over sometimes. Ezor has admired them with her.

Ezor bursts from the water near her as sharp as a swordfish and as fast as a sailfish, sliding effortlessly through the tumultuous air. Like the ripping winds are nothing but a soft caress, making a playground of the warring sky; the victorious cry she lets out makes Acxa feel silly for being even remotely impressed by the violence of the storm. 

Lighting may strike often, but it barely lasts. Ezor sails slickly over a wave and disappears from sight into the rabid foam of a cresting wave. 

Acxa feasts her eyes on Ezor’s contrasting color, the flashing grin in the moments she can, jealousy digging deep like trenches, and wonders how high Ezor can fly. If she’s ever tried to reach the sky like Acxa has. If Ezor, who bounces around like an excited seahorse, has craved to touch the sun. 

Ezor already finds too much joy in what Acxa can’t do, so she probably hasn’t. 

 

Consolation prizes. Consolation prizes are bearable when another steps up to receive the same, and that’s why Acxa considers herself and Narti two runner-ups for a prize they failed to win. Zethrid can jump, as weightless as the shining moon, and Ezor has the best of both worlds, slicing through air and water alike. But Narti stays at the surface, tail too slippery and thin to cut through it. Instead she lounges on the rock next to Acxa, eel eyes white and empty and only just modestly covered underneath a dark tarp of seaweed. 

They enjoy silence, together. A concept Zethrid and Ezor often fail to grasp as they mock the both of them and dart off into the horizon, tussling enough underneath the surface for the ocean to ripple. Acxa eyes them blearily, then returns to stare in fascination at the seagulls cawing above them, flags of white and grey soaring in complicated patterns above and catching the wind like the sails on human ships. 

One of them bats its huge wings in a flurry, dropping down until its claws scrape the rock. Acxa backs off quickly, not wanting to start a fight with such an unfortunate creature, swimming away to a healthy distance. 

Narti stays and trails a sure hand over the wings of the seagull, over the painful hook of its beak. Acxa watches, curious, as the seagull ruffles its feathers and turns a baleful yellow eye on Acxa. But there’s something in that sharp gaze, something close to intelligence instead of chaotic malice, something that Acxa can’t quite put her fin on—

“How are you doing that?” Acxa asks.

A low hum travels through the water, a message Acxa barely understands. The seagull takes off. 

Consolation prizes aren’t always for runner-ups. They are also given to those who come last. Acxa watches the seagull soar, watches with a choking lump in her throat as Narti looks into nothing. Narti sees the same sights as the seagull: the far stretch of ocean, limitless, the tiny specks of them—lounging pensively on a rock—in the distance far below. Narti bypasses the tether of the ocean that both Zethrid and Ezor must still adhere to. 

Narti may not be able to feel the air on her skin, the soaring in her gut, because only those empty eel eyes connect. But she still sees the bright, brilliant blue sky Acxa dreams about. 

 

Acxa breaks to the surface with her breath held tightly, watching her hands pass through the glittering mirror like a knife, the cool air touching her fingertips, arms, shoulders, face, and finally, her sleek torso. It’s nothing like her first time at the surface, the harsh air attacking her lungs; Acxa knows how to breathe now, knows how to treat the unfamiliar air as naturally as the deep-sea waters. 

The rock scrapes her skin as she settles onto it, elbow propped up with her head resting comfortably to stare up at the unblinking moon, white and bright and only momentarily disrupted by the large clouds that drift lazily across the sky like a pod of whales. 

The surface lies around her, unblemished by whatever horrors her mama might have sparked in her young mind, of human pirates and predators. As smooth as a mirror, shimmering in the nightfall, near perfect. Ezor, Zethrid, Narti, even the clumsy-bodied humans, all of them love the surface for the waves, the storms, the shore, but Acxa loves it unconditionally, like the truest of loves. 

She loves it most now, when the sky glows purple, staining the mirrored sea the same, and the glow of her purple skin feels like a gift from the surface. It blends her in, until her faded eyes can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

_ Can I touch it?  _ Acxa hears her small voice hundreds of leagues away, years in the past. 

_ If you fly high enough _ , her mother returns, shaky yet soft with a fear Acxa has never known.

Acxa doesn’t need to fly when the sky comes down to join her, making her part of a whole, a part of something Acxa could never reach alone. It’s an embrace, a fulfillment of what she will never have—she knows that now, tampers down the jealousy in the face of her friends—and some would call this moment a consolation prize. 

Acxa knows better. In these moments, when the moon rises and the air goes still, the surface loves her back with its silence, its color, just her and only her. It feels like she’s won. 

  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
